


Exile

by PazithiGallifreya



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-30
Updated: 2016-12-30
Packaged: 2018-07-28 06:22:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7628470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PazithiGallifreya/pseuds/PazithiGallifreya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's nothing left to hold him back. There's nothing left for him to hold on to, either.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> From a tumblr prompt:
> 
> deathdaydungeon asked:
> 
> Eileen and Tobias Snape were living in Cokeworth during the summer of 1971. Neither character appeared to be in residence during the summer of 1996 (Spinner's End, HBP). What happened to them, and when?
> 
> Posted to Ao3 for personal archival purposes.
> 
> Content warning for alcoholism

It’s gotten worse, clearly. It used to be a couple nights a week, maybe three if things were going poorly at the mill.

Now? It’s every night, almost. He can’t afford it, but somehow he gets hold of it, anyway. He stumbles in sometime after midnight, every night, filthy and reeking and raging.

He used to live in utter terror of this man, this … _father_ (a word that feels like acid on his tongue); today he feels only the greatest contempt.

He dragged himself home from a disastrous year of school in June ( _don’t think about Lily, don’t think, don’t feel, don’t breathe_ ). He came home to find to find his mother absent and that he now stood over Tobias Snape by exactly one inch.

Severus was rail-thin like his mother and possessed no great measure of physical strength, even for a sixteen year old, but he was one inch taller and that was enough, apparently.

_Coward._

That first night, Tobias had raised his fist just once, hesitance written into his movement already, and Severus Snape felt that old long-learned urge to duck. But this time, his mind rebelled. No, he thought, this time. _No._

Tobias staggered when his son’s fist connected squarely with his nose, eyes bulging and mouth lolling open like a dog’s. He slumped back, collapsing onto the spindly wood chair at the kitchen table, and there he remained for the rest of the evening, blood oozing down his face to stain a shirt that had already seen better days.

 _I wish mum had been here to see it_ , he thought.

He loved his mother, still, despite all. He hated her, too. Not like he hated his father, but he hated her. The two feelings somehow managed to live side-by-side in his heart but he couldn’t bring himself to think about it too deeply.

But one thing was certain - she was _gone_.

He’d come home, having finished his fifth year, and she simply wasn’t there. Tobias merely grunted when he asked him the next day, _where’s mum at_ , and that was the only answer he was likely to get.

She won’t be coming back. The sky is blue, the pope is Catholic, and she _isn’t_ coming back.

His mind drifted back to Christmas holidays and her muttering over the stove in the kitchen, something about some cousins in Germany. He’d thought it odd at the time; she rarely mentioned her family in any specific manner. The Princes were an old pureblood line, diminished over time but with a noble history, or so she’d told him.

She’s better off, probably.

_She didn’t wait for me._

_I love her.  
_

_I **hate** her._

 

* * *

 

He wasn’t returning for long this year. He’d finished at Hogwarts for good. A few items stashed under the floorboards in his room to retrieve and he’d be leaving. Lucius Malfoy had made arrangements for him.

He’d already forgotten more than most so-called Potions Masters ever knew, but a proper apprenticeship was expected, apparently. One must do these things, Malfoy had purred at him. Appearances matter. _Just do what you are told._

Obedience matters, as well. He’d learned that much, already. His back still ached but at least the weird shocks in his spine had ceased. Cruciatus was a blunt instrument, he thought, no art nor subtlety in it. But it was effective enough a tool, and the Dark Lord was a master of it - apply _this_ much pressure, just _so_ \- but no more. The lesson is taught but no lasting harm done.

So much for glory and the honor and superiority of wizards.

Too late to question it now, he was another rank-and-file Death Eater, a faceless mask to be directed at will. Disobedience was punished, defiance was simply not to be borne. Loyalty would be rewarded, he was promised. Rewarded with _what_ , Severus was no longer sure of.

 _Patience, Severus._ Lucius had a smile like viper. _You will have a chance to prove your worth, sooner or later. One must simply wait for the opportune moment._

Right now, it was drudgery. It was kneeling, kissing the hem of a robe or the back of a hand, it was prostrating oneself on the ground. Begging. Crawling.

Crawling, like his father after a two-day bender, passed out on the sofa downstairs with flecks of vomit on his chin. He was dead to the world but his eyes were half-open, yellow sclera rimmed in red, his always-pale skin even more sallow than his wife and son’s had ever been.

Severus grabbed the books and phials and shrank them, stuffing them into his satchel. Mulciber was to meet him outside of Borgin and Burkes to escort him to Malfoy’s estate for the night’s meeting and it would not do to keep him waiting.

He took the stairs two at a time. He glanced at the prone form of his father. Something about him stalled his exit; the man was still. Very still. Morbid curiosity overpowered his repulsion; he walked over to the man.

Tobias Snape was dead.

Severus Snape turned and walked out the door. The Dark Lord was waiting.


	2. History Repeats

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eileen Prince packs her bag and leaves.

“The honor of this family is at stake. You are the last of us! Do you not understand?”

Of course she understands. She just doesn't _care_.

Bugger all of it. Pure blood. Honor. The ancient lineage of the Prince family, all the way back to its earliest roots in bloody Prussia. Who cares! She had no brother to carry the name, a fact which her father lamented on a near-daily basis these days, more often when he'd been in his cups, and usually ending in a tirade against her mother, who should have borne him a son, and herself, who should have _been_ a son. As though either of them chose any of this!

It's all they had cared about back in school, too. The gossip in the common room, rumors whispered underneath the weight of the castle. This cousin disgraced, that uncle disowned. And did you hear about _this_ one who married a _mudblood_? She had friends among her housemates, certainly, but Merlin the small talk got boring...

Eileen shifted the bag slung over her shoulder and tried to ignore the water seeping into her shoes. The rain had stopped but the ground was sodden and there were too many puddles to avoid them all. She'd cast a water-repelling charm on them a week ago, but it was too risky to pull out her wand and try to renew it.

She wasn't even sure where she was at the moment, if she were honest with herself, but she didn't much care about that either. She'd slipped out of her father's house that morning before dawn. She wasn't going to marry a _Black_ , she didn't care how much money the man had.

Let the man go marry some cousin like his brother had. Inbred, the lot of them, like every other pureblood family. _No wonder we're all so ugly,_ she thought viciously.

Like her own parents. Third cousins. She got her crooked teeth from the both of them, the slight squint from her mother and her father's uneven gait. She wasn't that far removed from Alphard Black, although she hadn't bothered to dig through the family geneologies to figure out just how close the match would be. It didn't matter, anyway. She wouldn't marry that fat bore if he'd come from another planet.

She'd hiked across the village and knocked on the door of a house that she knew belonged to another wizarding family just after sunrise. A friendly couple, both half-bloods, they had invited her inside for a cup of cold milk on occasion when she'd been much younger and had slipped away from her parents and wandered until they caught her up. Certainly not the sort that her parents associated with.

She'd asked to use their floo. They didn't hand her the canister of floo powder at first, but questioned her. She refused to answer. She just asked them again, _please_... Finally they relented, however hesitant. She wondered if they'd go to her parents' house the moment she disappeared in the flames, unwelcome as they knew they were. It didn't matter, she'd be long gone by then.

To the Leaky Cauldron, then out into London. Onto a bus going north, first to Birmingham, then another bus going somewhere else. She didn't look at the name. She didn't care.

Tired, hungry, and now with wet socks. She still had some money in a pocket but not the sort that Muggles use – she'd spent the last of that on the bus ticket. She could never carry much Muggle cash; her parents couldn't find out she even knew what it was.

She heaved the dripping satchel from her shoulder and dropped it on a bench next to a primary school playground and dropped herself down next to it. _I probably should have planned this better_.

“Well, you look like a drowned rat, eh?”

Eileen scowled up at the shadow that had spoken to her. He was tall, still young but somewhat worn, with an overlarge, crooked nose like a beak. A cigarette dangled from the corner of his wry half-smile. He pulled on it and took it between two fingers, exhaling smoke through his prodigious nostrils.

“And what does that make you, a drowned vulture?”

He laughed without reserve, revealing straight but nicotine-stained teeth, the skin around his eyes crinkling with mirth. He dropped the remnants of the cigarette and ground it underfoot into the pavement.

“Heading down to the pub, how'd you like to get out of the rain, doll?”

She scowled at him, affronted at the sheer cheek of the proposition. No man had ever spoken to her in such a manner in her life! _But then, no man has hardly ever spoken to you at all._ Her father's face rose up in her mind's eye, livid at the sight of her daughter even talking to this filthy Muggle. _Well._

"Oh, and the name's Toby, love."

She grabbed her satchel, stood and accepted the arm that the Muggle offered with a wink, and let the image of her father's face dissolve into the cold mist behind her.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've always imagined that Severus & Eileen share more in common that they probably realize (or would ever care to admit)....


End file.
